Before we can cover the effects of global terrorism on United States foreign policy, we have to define global terrorism. According to World English Dictionary terrorism is the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political means. Some forms of terrorism take a global or transnational scale when it transcends national borders and often targets people and locations other than the ones directly at issue (Patterson 2011). The events of September 11th 2001 were an example of global terrorism.They were an attempt to make Western Powers, like the United States, rethink their presence in the Middle East.
This wasn’t an attack by a sovereign nation like the attack at Pearl Harbor by Japan. These were by terrorist groups that were spread across multiple continents. Global terrorism led to the global war on terrorism resulting in military action in Afghanistan whose Taliban-led government had granted sanctuary to the al Qaeda terrorist that carried out the September 11th attacks on the United States.This also led President George W. Bush to create the preemptive war doctrine which allowed the United States to attack a potentially threatening nation even if the threat had not yet reached a serious and immediate level, leading to the War in Iraq (Patterson 2011). These global terrorist attacks would change how the United States does business in many different ways, from America’s national defense and security policy to how America distributes foreign aid.
The attacks resulted in the first major reorganization of the United States national security bureaucracy since the Department of Defense was reformed from the War and Navy Departments after World War II. The reorganization created the Department of Homeland Security, which was created in 2002 to Coordinate domestic antiterrorism efforts, secure the nation’s borders, enhancing defense against biological attacks, training emergency personnel to respond to attacks, and coordination efforts to stop domestic terrorism (Patterson 2011).The Department of Homeland Security would ensure safe international trade as well as commercial activity across and within the country’s borders. It would do this by realigning organizations such as the Transportation Security Administration, Federal Aviation Administration, American Association of Railroads, Federal Transit Administration, United States Department of Transportation, and U. S.
Customs. These organizations are working together to devise efficient and effective solutions that will enhance transportation security without adversely affecting commerce and daily life (Johnston 2004).The Department of Justice under the Bush administration would institute programs like the Terrorism Information and Prevention System and the Patriot ACT, as well as new immigration regulations which involve extensive questioning, fingerprinting, and other such measures regarding individuals of Islamic decent. Soliciting private information has raised questions about privacy rights and basic privileges of immigrants and nonresident aliens within the United States.Inconvenience to US citizens in the form of heightened security checks has also resulted in delays, dissatisfaction, and perceived harassment across the nation’s airports and at rail and bus terminals. Much criticism has been faced by the administration for overemphasizing security measures to the extent that they impinge upon fundamental civil rights and liberties that act as premises for the functioning of democracy within the United States (Johnston 2004).
On 14 March 2002 President Bush made a surprising proposal to establish the Millennium Challenge Account, designed to increase United States development aid to poor countries by $ 5 billion over a three year period beginning in FY 2004. This proposal was significant because it came from a party that had long had a record of antagonism toward foreign aid. It was surprising to many because the president had spent months rejecting calls to increase foreign aid , arguing that much United States foreign aid had been wasted.During the 2000 presidential campaign, he had indicated that poor nations that have no geopolitical significance to the United States - which at the time included many African countries - would not be a priority of his administration. All this changed with the September 11th terrorist attacks, which brought the tragedy of global terrorism to the forefront of American public interest. The attacks seemed to have convinced the president to reexamine the isolationism that had underlain his foreign-policy views and helped transform him into a champion of foreign aid for poor countries (Owusu 2007).
In proposing the Millennium Challenge Account the president outlined two striking programmatic characteristics. First he presented the program as a tool for fighting poverty and terrorism – a strategy for combating global poverty not only for its own good, but also as part of the war on terrorism. Additionally the Millennium Challenge Account was seen as an opportunity to restructure U. S. foreign-aid policy in four important ways. First, the president promised to increase the U.
S. foreign-aid budget by 50 percent over its allocation for FY 2002.This would reassert U. S leadership in international development assistance and help reverse the decrease in global foreign aid.
Second, the objectives assigned to the MCA differed significantly from past U. S. foreign-aid programs: the MCA was expected to shift the focus of U. S. foreign assistance to narrow and clearly defined objectives; provide assistance to selected low-income countries that had sound development policies; allow recipient countries to play a greater role in program design, implementation, and evaluation; and lower the bureaucratic and administrative costs of aid disbursement.Third the Millennium Challenge Account was expected to be politically neutral: allocation of the funds would not be influenced by strategic considerations.
Fourth, instead of relying on the United States Agency for International Development to implement the MCA program, a new body, the MCC, was created to administer the MCA (Owusu 2007). Over the course of the past decade, international concern for Sub-Saharan Africa has steadily increased, and for the United States, the region has achieved a level of strategic importance that it had never previously held.This trend is driven by the strategic location of the continent for U. S. counterterrorism efforts, the growing importance of Africa as a source of natural resources, especially oil, and the growing demand for peacekeeping forces and humanitarian resources from the international community generated by persistent political instability in the region. In Sub-Saharan Africa, East Africa has been the site of the most longstanding terrorist organizations and operations, and the region serves as the hub of US anti-terror activities.
Regional patterns to the nature of Islamic groups, their organization and recruitment patterns, and their scope of operations and goals, influence the way that they finance themselves. Conditions of statelessness, porous borders, and large Muslim communities further render this region critically important when studying terrorist finance in Africa (Piombo 2006). There are, of course, explicit counter-terrorism programs. In East Africa, the East African Counter-Terrorism Initiative and the Combined Joint Task Force, Horn of Africa provides the base for US counterterrorism programs.The key goals of US CT policy in East Africa are containment in Somalia; counterterrorism and the promotion of peace and stability in Sudan, and security partnerships with Kenya and Ethiopia.
Increasing border security, better surveillance of coastal traffic, increased customs efficiency and seaport security could all work to reduce the non-traditional methods of terrorist finance that exist throughout the region, particularly in Sudan and Somalia.Established in June 2003 as a program of the Department of State, the $100 million East Africa Counterterrorism Initiative provides key states in the Horn of Africa with military training to strengthen coastal, border, customs, airport, and seaport security. In addition, the Initiative plans to train law enforcement officials in East Africa. Finally, the program includes assistance for regional efforts against terrorist financing and police training, as well as an education program to counter extremist influence (Piombo 2006). In conclusion global terrorism has affected U. S.
foreign policy in many ways.It has caused the U. S. to start two wars, the war in Iraq and the global war on terrorism, and to shift its concern toward the continent of Africa.
The United States has strayed away from its previously isolationist views on foreign aid and has started helping failed or failing governments around the globe in an attempt combat terrorism. Finally global terrorism has led the U. S. to realign and reorganize national security bureaucracy for the first time since WWII creating the Department of Homeland Security and Transportation Security Administration to address concerns at home.
